2024-2025 Season Takeaways

First takeaway: do the Russians ever have to come back?

With World Team Trophy officially over, the 2024-2025 figure skating season comes to a close. Here are my big takeaways in the run-up to the Olympic season:

Ilia is beatable…

… And the other Men need to start acting like it. Yes, if Ilia lands 7 flawless quad jumps, there’s no amount of deeply felt artistry that will beat him. If he manages that staggering athletic feat, he will win. But over and over and over again this season, he didn’t manage it. He made errors. He stumbled, he popped jumps. There were multiple competitions when his score came up humble. Notoriously quadless Jason Brown almost beat him in the free skate at World Team Trophy. Ilia kept winning all season because other skaters made more errors. Yuma Kagiyama, I beg you, go to Amber Glenn’s mental coach in the off season. You can beat Ilia! No really; you can! While we’re on the subject of the men…

…Never underestimate Jason Brown.

Jason’s messy Grand Prix series had me convinced the magic was gone. It seemed like PR damage control when he started giving interviews about issues with his skating boots. “Problems with boots” seems to be a common refrain among skaters who’ve got the yips. But we never should have doubted Jason for a minute. He really did have problems with his boots, which were clearly gone by the time he showed up for Worlds and helped Ilia clinch three spots for the American Men at the Olympics. And then he showed up again at World Team Trophy, turning out two nearly perfect skates to help win Gold. At this point, Jason would have to severely injure himself for Team USA not to reward him with an Olympic berth. And I think he’s made a very solid case for them to include him in the Team Event, too. Honestly, at the rate the Men are going, he could be in line for at least an individual bronze medal.

While we’re estimating people, American Women have a rising stock.

Amber Glenn was almost undefeated. Alysa Liu came out of literal no where to win Worlds. All three US Women finished in the Top 5 at Boston and scored over 200, including Isabeau Levito, who barely competed all season. Four of the Top 10 scores of the season belong to American Women. Bradie Tennell never scored below a 190, despite the fact that she’s coming back from an injury. Sarah Everhardt almost never missed a jump, and she came pretty close to making a facial expression at Four Continents.

We’ve got MULTIPLE internationally competitive Women going into an Olympic season. Nevermind that we’re dominant in Ice Dance, and had back-to-back prodigies leading Men’s figure skating for the last 8 years. America loves an Ice Princess, and they’re about to be served a full royal court. Love a goth-pop princess who advocates for mental health and waves the rainbow flag? We got one. Like a traditional, delicate ballerina on ice who can rap along to Nikki Minaj off-ice? Yep, we have that, too. Maybe you like a IDGAF scene kid with a lip piercing who thrives under pressure? She won Worlds. We’ve also got an aging warrior queen, a stone-faced consistency machine, and a complete Wild Card (Ava Marie Ziegler is still out there, still recovering from surgery, poised for a comeback.) American Women are back, baby! Brace yourself for the People issues and the Cover Girl ads.

Ice Dance is preparing for the actual old guard to step down.

With Chock/Bates, Gilles/Poirier, and Guignard/Fabbri likely to retire after the Olympic season, there’s plenty of Ice Dance teams ready to zoom up the rankings. With the inevitable politics of Ice Dance, there’s a bit of a bottle neck at the top at the moment. Someone (Madison Chock) is about to pop the champagne bottle, and it looks like the B teams are all about to surge up. I thought Marjo/Zach (CAN) would be the heir apparent, but they finished behind CPom (USA) and Olivia Smart/Male Partner (ESP) at Worlds. Maybe that was just a matter of Boston Worlds and a perfect Dune program, but I’ll be interested to see how scoring shakes out in the fall. It seems the chess pieces are moving into formation for the post-Olympics hierarchy. And don’t forget that Lilah Fear is definitely not retiring if she thinks a 2030 Gold medal is in hand.

While we’re on the subject of Ice Dance scoring, I found it INCH-REST-ING that the top French Ice Dance team, Lopareva/Brissaud suddenly got their lowest score of the season at the notoriously generously scored World Team Trophy, even falling behind Eteri’s daughter in the placements. Can’t help but notice this drop in scores comes at the same time that that favorite son, Guillaume Cizeron, announced his return to French Ice Dance next season. If I believed in Ice Dance conspiracy theories (which I obviously do because there’s multiple pieces of evidence that they exist), I would say that the French federation decided to move all their eggs to a different basket. Thank you to the French teams that kept Gui’s seat warm!

Everyone will be lighting candles for citizenship.

There’s plenty of skaters in line for Olympic berths (and even medals) who are crossing their fingers for citizenship to work out. Some of them more likely that others. Canadian Christina Carreira followed the old-fashioned path to US citizenship and seems very likely to have all of her paperwork done in time, and I don’t see a world where the French federation doesn’t ensure Laurence Fournier Beaudry has her French passport in time for the Ice Dance event.

But there’s some nail biters out there. Most notable is one of the top Pairs skaters— Nikita Volodin, who has to pass a German language exam within the next few months to secure his citizenship. If he’s not at the Olympics, they will be a real hole in the rankings.

Others are almost impossible longshots, like Alisa Efimova for US Pairs. Sure, there’s rumors she married Misha Mitrofanov for citizenship, but even if she did, that path to citizenship takes years. Her only hope would be some kind of Presidential order. Honestly…that doesn’t seem wild, given everything else going on lately.

And some quicker takeaways, for fun:

• Korea keeps sabotaging itself by exhausting its skaters before Worlds.

• If you can’t win a medal, win the crowd’s favor. Choose your music with the audience in mind.

• Don’t wear red and use Handmaid’s Tale voiceovers if you’re going to claim your program is about a girl who drowned on a boat. WE CAN HEAR JUNE’S VOICE, for Pete’s sake.

• Even if the Russians manage to get some of their top skaters into the “neutral athlete” openings at the Olympics, no one is handing them the titles, but they can probably still take Pairs. Maybe Women, though it’s hard to say if the latest Russian teenager will keep the usual Eteri bonus in the current climate.

• Wakaba Higuchi clearly made the wrong person mad very early in her career.

Three Non-Figure Skating Things: Stuff I Bought at a Local Craft Fair

• This angry possum mug from City in Bloom Ceramics. I love it so much that I can’t wait for it to be Monday morning so I can use it for my coffee. Also a big fan of her fancy cake mugs.

• This rainbow Y’all tea towel from Paper and Penny Print Studio. I also got a Taylor Swift themed tote bag and wished I could get a too large “(Kinda) Good Dog” bandana for Fritzi.

• A giant homemade Oreo from The Daily, a local cafe that had a stand at the festival. Honestly, it just made me wish it was a Whoopie Pie.

Next Time: Back next weekend for a full non-figure skating issue featuring April Endorsements.